Outdoors: Looking at the biology and chemistry of deer milk

Tuesday

Sep 17, 2013 at 6:00 AM

Mark Blazis Outdoors

The Connecticut early archery deer season opened Monday to control a population that in many areas is far too numerous. Though the season is set to coincide with the maturing and independence of fawns, which can now survive on browse, some does will still be lactating.

While field-dressing some of these harvested deer, archers will occasionally see a few drops of milk. More than one reader curiously has asked what deer milk tastes like and whether sampling it poses any health risks.

The chemistry of milk varies considerably from species to species. Our human milk is 4.5 percent fat, 1.1 percent protein, and 6.8 percent lactose or milk sugar. That latter figure is relatively high. It’s obvious that we humans are predisposed to sweetness. Our milk is considerably sweeter than almost all other animals’ milk. Only donkey and mink milk at 6.9 percent lactose is sweeter. Horse milk is a surprisingly sweet 6.1 percent. We might be drinking mares’ milk rather than cows’ milk today if horses were more docile and productive.

Far below the sweetness level of human milk is very fatty seal milk, which is only 2.6 percent. While whale milk is by far the richest of all milks with 34.8 percent butterfat, its lactose is only 1.8 percent. Only an Inuit would like it, considering its fishy overtones. The least sweet milks include polar bear, with 0.5 percent lactose, and kangaroo, which surprisingly has only a trace. Joey obviously doesn’t have a sweet tooth.

Where do deer fit in? Whitetails typically have milk that’s 19.7 percent fat, 10 percent protein, and 2.6 percent lactose. That’s four times fatter and nine times higher in protein than human milk, but only about half as sweet. No wonder fawns grow so much faster than human babies.

If deer have been eating high-tannin buds and twigs, pine vegetation or seaweed, as they do on islands like Anticosti, their milk can taste strange and unappetizing to us. Deer that have been eating sweeter foods like corn and soybeans, as they do in Illinois and Iowa, can be expected to produce milder milk.

Strange doesn’t necessarily mean bad, of course, though evolutionary wise, strange almost automatically elicits aversion responses, helping us in some cases to avoid toxic foods or other potential dangers. Some foods that don’t taste good to us, though, can be very nutritious. To a hungry fawn, variable local flavors don’t matter.

Our ancestors couldn’t figure out how to harvest deer milk efficiently, choosing instead more docile and easily managed goats, sheep and cows. Reindeer milk, though, is the exception, having long been harvested by Laplanders. Moose milk has been harvested, too, but in very limited quantities.

It’s commercially extracted only in Russia, because of its 10 percent butterfat content and allegedly soothing gastrointestinal benefits, and in Sweden, where moose cheese is produced as a novelty item, currently selling for about $500 a pound.

New Zealand, with its huge red deer farming industry, has made the world’s first red deer cheese, a surprisingly difficult feat because of the milk’s high protein. Such cheese tends to be hard and dry.

Researchers have found red deer milk contains a compound that may help the human immune system. The cost to supply enough of it for a global market would be an initial problem, though, with it retailing for about $100 per liter, but profitability could be very high. One red deer’s annual production is potentially worth about $20,000.

New Zealand may lead the way in research and development of the red deer dairy industry. But as whitetails are not similarly farmed in the United States, we’re unlikely to ever see a similar effort here. Whitetails’ hyperactive personalities aren’t conducive to passive milking.

In daring to taste wild deer milk from a doe I had shot in the early season, I was concerned about possible Chronic Wasting Disease, brucellosis, tuberculosis and possible allergic effects. Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine’s Dr. Sam Telford soothed my fears, advising that there is no evidence that CWD can be transmitted through milk.

And although brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis possibly could be carried by deer, they are not known to be present in New England. If they were, hunters could be infected just from simple skin exposure to blood and other deer tissue during butchering, so theoretically any sampling of milk is no more dangerous than cutting up a deer.

The only major concern would seem to be for infectious bacterial agents, especially from a gut-shot animal. Deer can be infected by E. coli O157. We’d never want to risk tasting the potentially contaminated milk of a gut-shot deer or one that took long to recover.

As for allergic reactions to deer milk, Telford thinks they are possible but extremely unlikely. Additionally, a deer feasting on hallucinogenic mushrooms would be unlikely to have their active compounds excreted in the milk in a strength sufficient to send someone on a “trip.”

Just as remotely, a deer eating poison ivy would be unlikely to have enough allergenic metabolites or urushiol in its milk to affect anyone except the most pathologically sensitive to poison ivy. And even that scenario is questionable. Telford suggests that anyone deathly sensitive to poison ivy would probably not be out hunting deer anyway.

Though the squeamish among us may never dare taste a drop of deer milk — or anything truly exotic, for that matter — under the safest of circumstances, Telford certainly wouldn’t hesitate. The world-renowned researcher, out of scientific curiosity, has had a drop of cobra venom on his tongue and is the only person I know who can claim he has tasted death. Deer milk is hardly threatening to him.

Those hunters who insist on sampling a drop of deer milk, Telford suggests, should still prudently check their doe for mastitis, sampling milk only from healthy looking nipples. While some local corn-fed whitetails might prove unobjectionable, our worst-tasting deer, those coming from the pinewoods, might convey a hint of turpentine, not unlike the pitch flavor in a glass of Greek retsina.

That said, having once tasted Worcester County deer milk and been less than impressed by its minimal sweetness, I’d be hard-pressed to try it again or recommend it, even considering that ill effects are highly unlikely. From my perspective, deer milk is best left to fawns.